Introduction
Boston’s North End was an especially diverse and crowded neighborhood in the middle of the 1800s. Many of these residents are poorly recorded in official documents. Fortunately, archaeology can help reveal some of their stories.
Archaeologists use artifacts to learn how people lived in the past. These artifacts are the “stuff” that can tell us the story of their lives. Archaeologists like to find places where people left many artifacts, such as a privy.
What's a Privy?
Privies are outdoor toilets, or outhouses. They consisted of a small structure or room with a bench with holes in it situated over a pit or small basement-like structure where feces and urine would drop and collect, and occasionally other items fell or were put into them.
Before running water, people relied on privies located in their backyards or attached to the rear of their homes. Until the late 1800s, everyone in Boston, rich or poor, used privies. There were hundreds of outhouses in Boston’s North End.
When privies were abandoned or rebuilt, people would sometimes use the open hole in their yard as a quick and easy way to get rid of garbage. Remember, this all happened before Boston had regular trash collection.
Archaeologists love finding privies because they can have numerous artifacts in them. They also tend to be wet and deeply buried. These wet conditions help preserve many artifacts that would have decomposed, like fabric, leather, bone, parasites, plant matter, etc. The depth of the privies also helped save the artifacts from later disturbances and development in an ever-changing and growing city.
This online exhibit tells the tale of two 1860s privies found by archaeologists in Boston’s North End. One was found by archaeologists behind the Paul Revere House. The second was found during Boston’s Big Dig at the site of a former brothel.
Use the links below to follow the tale of one of these two privies.
References and Credits
Text by: Thomas Begley, Lillian Nunno, and Joe Bagley, with great appreciation to Dr. Jane Becker for her extensive reviews, comments, and guidance
We would like to acknowledge the extensive work by the 2020 graduate students of UMass Boston History Program HIST625: Interpreting History in Public Approaches to Public History Practice whose preliminary work formed the foundations upon which this exhibit and its content were built, including: Thomas Begley, Luke Bergquist, Charles Boros, Stephanie Branas, Marielle Gutierrez, Mia McMorris, Lily Nunno, and Kaylee Redard.
Image Credit
Cover image courtesy of the Boston Public Library: North End tenements [Photograph]. ([ca. 1930–1939]). Retrieved from https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/js956q51m
Privy Image: Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator. Parkman House, 33 Beacon Street, Boston, Suffolk County, MA. Suffolk County Boston Massachusetts, Documentation Compiled After 1933. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/ma0474/.
Text References
Elia, Ricard. Archaeological Investigations at the Paul Revere House in Boston, Massachusetts. Office of Public Archaeology, Boston University, 1997.
Luiz, Jade. “A house recommended”: the sensory archaeology of sexuality, embodiment, and creation of space in a mid-nineteenth-century brothel in Boston, Massachusetts. Dissertation, Boston University Archaeology Department, 2018.